Teachers’ feedback to develop students’ critical thinking in English academic writing at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya

Critical thinking in writing can be developed through feedbacks during the writing process. This qualitative study examined how feedback develops students’ writing critically through content analysis of the students’ English academic article. The focus of this study is to explore types of feedback that is given by the teacher to develop students’ critical thinking and investigate the development of students’ critical thinking through teacher’s feedback in English academic writing. The participants of this study were students in academic writing at the sixth semester of English Language Education Department UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya. The data show that there are four types of feedback that can develop students’ critical thinking in English academic writing: suggestion, criticism, marginal, and end feedback. The critical thinking skills developed through teacher’s feedback were cognitive process of understanding (beginning) and knowledge dimension of factual knowledge in pre-writing, cognitive process of applying and analyzing (developing) and knowledge dimension of conceptual knowledge in whilst writing and cognitive process of evaluating (competent) and knowledge dimension of conceptual knowledge in revising stage. The findings imply that feedback bring benefit to the development of students’ critical thinking in English academic writing. Hence, the feedback should be applied in the teaching and learning process because feedback of the students’ writing is essential to develop the process of teaching and learning, especially English academic writing. It enables the teachers to find out how they have been successful in their education and what they need to do in order to make their teaching better.